This was part of a discussion we started a year ago when I was teaching him about repeating decimals. We started easy with 1/10 + 1/100 + 1/1000 forever is 1/9, moved on to stuff like 1/9 + 1/81 + 1/729 etc is 1/8. He particularly likes 1/49, which has a 42 digit repeat and is 0.0204081633..etc or the sum of (2^n)/(100^n) where n is 1..infinity.

He also likes how 1/4 is related to 1/49 and 1/499. 1/4 is sum((2^n)/(10^n)) (n <- 1..infinity), 1/49 is sum((2^n)/(100^n)), and 1/499 is sum((2^n)/(1000^n)).

Anyway, since 1/4 is sum((2^n)/(10^n)), we briefly wondered what sum((n^2)/(10^n)) was. I didn’t know, and I forgot about it.

But my son remembered and somehow calculated it to be 110/729. Then he told me sum((n^2)/(100^n)) is 10100/(99^3). So I suggested maybe sum((n^2)/(X^n)) (n <- 1..infinity) is (X*(X+1))/((X-1)^3).

That’s kind of cool. It’s related to the fact that 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + ..etc.. is 1, and 1/3 + 1/9 + 1/27 + ..etc.. is 1/2, and in general sum(1/(B^n)) is 1/(B-1) (summing over n <- 1..infinity). And also 1/2 + 2/4 + 3/8 + ..etc.. is 2, and 1/3 + 2/9 + 3/27 + ..etc.. is 3/4, and in general sum(n/(B^n)) is B/((B-1)^2). So if my guess above is right maybe we’ve caught a pattern. Take a look:

That’s interesting. And the denominator follows the obvious pattern as we go forward. For sum((n^3)/(B^n)) it’s (B-1)^4, for sum((n^4)/(B^n)) it’s (B-1)^5, etc. As for the numerator, you’d think B(B+1)(B+2) might be next.

But it’s not. The numerator is a lot weirder than that.

Let’s look at this again:

Summing over n <- 1..infinity:
sum((n^0)/(B^n)) is v0/((B-1)^1) where v0 is 1
sum((n^1)/(B^n)) is v1/((B-1)^2) where v1 is B
sum((n^2)/(B^n)) is v2/((B-1)^3) where v2 is B(B+1)
sum((n^3)/(B^n)) is v3/((B-1)^4) where v3 is ?
...
sum((n^A)/(B^n)) is vA/((B-1)^(A+1))

The first three rows are 1, B, and B(B+1) as I stated above. But the rows after that are harder to figure. If the next numerator were B(B+1)(B+2), the 4th row (where A is 3) would be 24, 60, 120, 210 instead of 26, 66, 132, 230. I don’t know of a simple expression to generate this sequence.

The column where B is 3 is the sequence [1, 3, 12, 66, 480, 4368, 47712, 608016, 8855040, 145083648, 2641216512, etc]. This series is also (sort of) described in the Encyclopedia of Integer Sequences (att.com) where it is called the Expansion of ln(1+sinh(x)/exp(x)) (A009362). But A009362 is not exactly the same sequence since it starts with 0 and has alternating positive and negative integers, like this: [0, 1, -3, 12, -66, 480, -4368, 47712, -608016, etc].

I don’t have names for any of the other integer sequences in the tables above. I’ll list a few of them here in case someone ever googles them. (I don’t think google is very good at recognizing number sequences in table columns.)

The following lists are just google bait. Read above to find out where they came from.

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